Dutch Troops’ ‘Tude Helping Afghan Poppies Bloom?

The opium trade finances the Taliban resistance in Afghanistan. And efforts to eliminate the trade have seen limited success, at best. Poppy fields are just too numerous, alternative crops too few and the Afghan government too corrupt; plus the Taliban aren’t taking eradication sitting down. New Yorker scribe Jon Lee Anderson accompanied an American-led poppy-eradication force that came under Taliban attack in Dutch-occupied Tarin Kowt in March:

As I walked along a trail between the poppy fields, gunshots rang out. Men began running, taking cover, and looking up toward the village on the bluff; the firing seemed to be coming from the mud-walled compounds there. Kelly, the ex-cop from Arizona, yelled at me to take cover. I headed toward a stand of trees with Aaron Huey, the photographer who was travelling with me; from there we could no longer see any other Americans. A group of six or seven Interior Ministry policemen — almost all of the local police had disappeared as soon as the shooting started — ran past with their guns drawn, and we followed.

Around a dozen Afghans died in the fighting; in his piece Anderson criticizes the Dutch for refusing to send ambulances to pick up the injured. (See, it’s not just me.) And his criticisms don’t end there:

In Uruzgan, the Dutch have advocated a policy of nonconfrontation and the pursuit of development projects. (The Dutch commander, Hans van Griensven, was quoted in the Times in April as telling his officers, “We’re not here to fight the Taliban. We’re here to make the Taliban irrelevant.”) A European official told me that the Dutch had doubts about [eradication leader Doug] Wankel’s mission; they feared that it might be counterproductive, because it was only about destroying poppies and did not include any of the other seven pillars of the national plan. “There was concern that it might crosscut other activities focussed on security and development,” he said.

Wankel was frustrated by the wariness of the Dutch. “Most or all Europeans are opposed to eradication—they’re into winning hearts and minds,” he said. “But it’s our view that it isn’t going to work. There has to be a measured, balanced use of force along with hearts and minds.” He conceded, however, that the Uruzgan operation fell squarely on the use-of-force side of the scale. Later, he told me, aid, seed, and fertilizer would be offered to the farmers around Tirin Kot, but not yet. Other Americans were frankly contemptuous of the Dutch policy, which they regarded as softheaded.

The Western official told me, “We don’t have a lot of time here. If we don’t get a handle on this soon, we’ll have a situation where you can’t get rid of it, like we had in Colombia for a while, where the narcos owned part of the government and controlled significant parts of the economy. And we have a lot of evidence of direct links with the Taliban. These problems, and organized crime, too, are being embedded here while they’re talking about ‘alternative development.’ ”